Iconic, short-lived Canadian-made Bricklin a hot ticket with collectors and at Oshawa’s Auto Museum

Fifty years ago yesterday the first production Bricklin – Canada’s unique and now iconic sports car – rolled off the line in St. John, New Brunswick.

Produced by American businessman Macolm Bricklin and manufactured in the maritime province (thanks to a $4.5 million financial package from the provincial government and New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield) from 1974-1976, the ill-fated but colourful (like its creator) car was feted by its fans Sunday at a party in St. John.

Less than 3,000 of the gull-wing door cars – a rival for the Chevrolet Corvette at the time – were ever produced, but plenty of them found their way to Durham Region roads, driveways and weekend car meets.

About 1,500 of them are still around and one was added to the collection at the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa in 2021. A Bricklin was on loan to the museum in the late 1970s and early 1980s as well.

The car is a popular attraction and museum board member Greg Johnston noted one of his fellow board members wrote a book on the car’s history.

As well, he added the car to last weekend’s annual McLaughlin Day walking tour of downtown Oshawa, with Johnston showcasing the anniversary of the Bricklin’s short-lived production history as part of a talk on Oshawa “still having a strong auto industry” while other communities around the country were losing own manufacturing plants.

The Bricklin and its creator is also the subject of an auto museum Third Thursday Talk – Malcolm Bricklin and the Fantastic SV1 – on October 17, with Dr. Dimitry Anastakis of the University of Toronto’s History department and the Rotman School of Management.

“Malcolm Bricklin’s fantastical 1970s-era Safety Vehicle-1 (SV1) was audaciously launched during a tumultuous breakpoint in postwar history. Built in New Brunswick, the Bricklin remains one of Canada’s most iconic cars 50 years after its launch. The tale of the sexy-yet-safe SV1 reveals the influence of automobiles on ideas about the future, technology, entrepreneurship, risk, safety, showmanship, politics, sex, gender, business, and the state.”

Bricklin himself participated via Zoom in a Third Thursday Lecture Series talk in 2021.

The Bricklin SV-1 is a two-seat sports car noteworthy for its electric paint colours (orange or green), its famous gull-wing doors and safety-first concrete bumpers. The Bricklin Canada assembly plant was in the Grandview Industrial Park in St. John while a separate facility in Minto, New Brunswick took care of the bodywork (with a little help from polymer expert Archie Hamielic from Hamilton’s McMaster University).

Hatfield okayed the government financing for production, though much of the cash infusion was used for engineering and development and to pay salaries at the U.S.-based company.

The SV-1 was presented to a star-studded gathering of celebrities and potential dealers at the Riviera Hotel Las Vegas in February 1974 but production didn’t last long, with quality control problems, claims of nepotism, financial issues, supplier shortages, worker absenteeism and a series of price hikes that more than doubled the price of the car in two years eventually leading to the end of the line for the vehicle.

The car included a huge range of innovative safety features (including those super solid but super heavy bumpers) and the museum’s 1975 model came equipped with a Ford Windsor 351-V8 churning out 175 hp with a top speed of about 110 miles per hour.

The car, weighing in at a substantial 3,470 pounds, sold for $9,980 in 1975 prices.

The first Bricklin rolled off the assembly line on August 6, 1974